Here for You
by It-Ended-At-3
Summary: Love is obtained through one's greatest weakness. Shinichi suffers his Conan transformation before a knowing Ran. ShinRan


_So here's another fic that I was inspired to write after a plethora of ShinRan angst fics and dramatic AMVs. I am in love with this pairing I swear. This was one of those musing ideas I get on the train every morning; What are missing out on with Ran still not knowing the secret? This is my response. I wrote this to a lot of songs, but I suggest "Clarity" by Zedd, (Sam Tsui's cover is earth shattering)_

_**Here for You**_

_A Detective Conan Fanfiction by_

_It-Ended-At-3_

"_Please…"_ He breathed.

Her stare grew sharper as her eyes narrowed. He felt her grip tighten as though his sleeve were the clutch to a motorbike.

"No."

The sense of déjà vu was crawling along the corners of his mind. It was that time on their way back from east Ohkuo- the locked car murder-case, fishing line, strangulation. Her stubborn defiance bounced off his face with a threatening force. It was her way of silently flashing a warning. '_I will get my way_' it said. Unlike that time before where unsuspecting strangers prodded idly in their vehicles and roves of police hovered with nosy concern, she did not hold that uncertain desperation. Her grip that time had been fearful and unknowing. His presence was still a dream then, the situation was too frightening…

"Ran… _Please"_ He repeated weakly.

A sudden spike of pain jolted through his body. He crumpled like a rag, a hand flying to his chest as the sharp sensation ripped through his veins with a fury. A cry of surprise escaped him with the rest of his breath.

"Shinichi!"

Ran's arms were around his shoulders just as his knees buckled, the crushing weight of gravity proving far too superior to his shocked system. She broke his fall, stabilizing him back to his feet but still felt him lean on her with a need. The agony rattled every cell with a piercing intensity which starved his brain of peace. His fingers dug claws into the fabric of his dress shirt as he twisted and pull at his chest. He let out an unintentional whimper at the hot, pulsing, hammer-like throb of his heart which accelerated like a helicopter during take-off. Each beat pumped acidic poison through his veins. His shoulders shook with the sudden spasm.

The young woman beside him grew tense and she couldn't help her choked sob of empathy. "Shinichi." Her concern was tangible but not as frantic as it would have been a month ago. She gripped his shoulders protectively and stroked him unconsciously as he rocked under the attack with shallow, shuddering breaths.

The repetitive motion of her gentle fingers lulled his shaking like fresh water to a crackling dry desert. Ran let a labored puff of air ease through her as the form under her hands relaxed, the first of the spasms of pain subsiding.

"Let me stay with you." She said softly.

He lifted his head up weakly to meet her strong gaze. Despite the fact that his weary eyes were shaking in and out of focus, a hot fire burned behind his blue orbs. Repulsed, his face twisted with a pathetic anger that drew dark shadows across his arctic glare.

"No!" He hissed with a strength that caused her to flinch. He bared his teeth, tired but angry. "No! I need you to _leave." _

The tension was suffocating. He could feel the mounting pressure under his skin. It was an ocean of crushing water ready to bury its prey. It was an inferno of blazing flames dying to eat a forest. He released himself from her supportive hold.

"I know now! There's no need to keep it secret!" She challenged in her own bout of spiking fury that made her voice shrill. She had seen him change before, but she was too shocked to compute his situation then—too startled to realize his pain.

"That's not the point!" He growled. Shinichi bowed his head to catch his breath with a wheeze. He sucked the oxygen in with a hunger and moaned at his imminent asphyxiation. The moment of weakness made his limbs grow heavy. Gravity pulled with a vengeance. His knees buckled with the violent vertigo. It was his flickering eyes that caused Ran to catch him yet again with an embrace. She struggled under the dead weight for a moment before finding her bearings and adjusting the teenager as he regained his strength. An instant of self-awareness caused Shinichi's eyes to flare.

"_GO AWAY!"_ He snapped, biting the air and lashing his arms like a striking cobra.

Ran hit the floor after a loud echoing smack, a numb shock rattling her brain as her cheek burned with a stinging irritation. She couldn't even compute the sinking chasm in her heart. She touched her welting face as she rose to her hands. A blank image of whiteness infested her mental process with nothingness. The intricate rug beneath her legs blurred into an impressionist painting, hot tears brimming upon her eyelids which spilled drops like gluttonous wine glasses.

"S-Shinichi?" She sounded like a child. Her head turned toward him with a petrified face of incomprehension. "I-I don't understand." She just wanted to help him.

His eyes were bulging in a horror she'd never seen. His jaw was quivering and his frozen hands-reminiscent of his assault-were shaking. His mouth was silently agape, cackles of guttural tremors emanating from his throat. The sledge hammer began a montage of skull cracking blows upon his head. Every muscle was coiled like tight, blood-stopping springs. He had somehow pressed that impossible self-destruct button. Break-down was imminent.

"R-R-Ran…" his voice was like a decrepit tape. His mouth moved and moved but no sound came out. You could see the abyss he was staring down through his thrashing and savage panic beneath his skin. _He had hurt her. He had hurt her. Oh god, what had he done?_

He stumbled back. All he saw was her confusion and innocence. He looked at his shaking hands—weapons of hubris, stupid, masculine, meaningless _pride._

The mounting attack that rose his temperature and cracked his bones gave a curt knock alongside his growing self-loathing. Every ounce of his marrow boiled, turning his skeleton to putty. A deep black pit formed in his stomach as his bones suddenly felt soft and malleable in such a literal sense that he instinctively clasped his face and chin to fight his gag reflexes. He collapsed for the second time that night with a graceless crash. His skin was hot and slimy. He could feel the sweat cling to him like glue and how it continued to coat him in a dismal attempt to get cooler. The fire within him surged hotter and hotter. His flesh bubbled and split in the intense inferno. He heard a faint sizzle hiss through the air. With expectant horror he watched the water in his body evaporate into mist as it begun to billow of him in waves like smoke from a factory.

He felt like a science experiment. A freak. She stared at him in a dumbfounded shock, much like the first time. She couldn't help it then. It was one of those locked room, no escape, poor timing situations when she was subject to the truth of a waning antidote. Ran had watched him shrink with a horror that allowed for little computing. It had happened so fast then that her confusion and fear took precedence over the situation. Her little Conan was indeed her little Shinichi (a relationship that they had redefined a few hours before the unfortunate reveal). Coming clean was not easy and his paranoia was cranked up a few good notches with poor collaborative acting on both their parts but it had eased his emotional mind. His plight was understood. So why was did the idea of her watching him change hurt so much?

He thought of her. He thought of her illuminating smile. He thought of her powerful karate stances. Her natural beauty, her soft voice, her loving eyes. He thought of her unyielding loyalty in the darkness of an after hours detective office by the phone and her drying puddle of tears. He loved her so much that it hurt far worse than the pain that his poison-ridden corpse paraded. It was so raw it made his world a black and white chessboard—a shallow land of personal insecurities. _He was weak_ .Like a shrieking amplifier struck with dissonance, his vocal chords sounded with a scream.

"_I don't want you to see me like this!"_

He choked abruptly.

Conan. He was the reason. The child taped on the thin glass of his mind's eyes. His round bespectacled eyes shone with a sickening innocence as he smiled that fake smile. His tiny hands pawed at the glass with greed, ready and eager to take everything from him. His life. His love. His happiness. Conan sucked it dry like a demented parasite. He was a walking criminal that was perpetually sliding from his grasp. His identity was at the mercy of a frail, pathetic, pitiful youth who perverted every element of his former life. He could feel his name and identity slip from his mind every time his pulse hammered his ribs. Conan… Conan…- "Shinichi."

He looked at the young woman he assaulted and his heart clenched. Her sparkling eyes shimmered with compassion and concern. Tears of a different nature spilled from her lashes like trails of raindrops upon the window. She was a bath of light after centuries of murdering darkness. She was a promise of hope in a barren harvest. She was the sight of beckoning arms to a lost and lonely soldier. She all but held out her hands to his crumpled form as she slowly managed a smile through her tears. It was as if to say; "_Don't worry I'm here for you…"_

Shinichi hesitated. The sight of the forming bruise on her cheek and the earth shattering smile sincerity on her lips stirred a higher level of self-loathing. She was too good for him.

"Stop." He begged but she was already moving toward him, closing the distance. "_Please."_

It would've been easier if she hated him. If she had been rejected and hurt by his outburst. It would have made this inevitable fate easier to swallow. He could forget about Kudo Shinichi forever and live a better life-an honest and kind childhood full of faithful friends, fun experiences, boundless opportunities, and crushing loneliness. Her doubtless acceptance and steadfast compassion cut like a knife.

Her arms wrapped slowly around him, snaking around his back in a light manner that somehow managed to make him shiver. She cut through the steam and searing hot skin to draw him close to her, his forehead resting on her bare collarbone. Like a rock in a raging tempest she engulfed him with a strong hug. With a need her fingers gripped his shoulders and she buried her face in his hair, letting his familiar shampoo take over her senses. It was like pressing her face to a hot stove and she could feel the harsh burns form with the contact, but she pressed forward. His pain was much worse.

"I need to see this." She responded simply with a wavering voice. "I need to see this."

She cooed in a faint whisper that could have lulled any child. She ran a hand through his dark hair, now damp with sweat and he trembled with pleasure that was a blossoming flower in a desolate winter. He couldn't win. Not against her, not ever. She was going to see him at his weakest. Nothing was going to move her.

Despair flooded into him with the realization. He whimpered like a mutt, a sweeping wave of cavernous shame consuming his being. She would see his height dwindle and his muscles atrophy. She would watch his sharp jaw grow pudgy with baby-fat and narrow eyes blink wide and round with youth. Years of optimistic and eager growth was going to vanish before her eyes and he could do nothing about it.

"I'm sorry…" He breathed. He was sorry for the tragic sight she was going to witness, the face of her dutiful protector defying her existence with appalling feebleness. She deserved a _man._ Not the child he was becoming. "I'm sorry it has to be this way."

"It's not forever."

"I hope." Pathetic. His voice cracked.

"You _know_." She corrected. Her other arm started rubbing circles on his back. "But until then you have to let me help you." She didn't raise her voice or harden it. "Don't force me to stand and watch you like some spectacle. You're worth more than that."

At her kind words he nudged closer, resting his forehead upon the curve of her neck. She flinched involuntarily at the heat. "_You're_ worth more than _this." _

She let loose a breath that tickled his hair. "You must be in so much pain…" She gave him a squeeze that distracted him from the burning inferno around him. "To have your life stolen so suddenly and then to have to brush it off like its nothing… I'd be hurting so much."

She sniffled and nudged her face into his head deeper. "I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I'd give up the moment I could."

He could almost scoff at the image of the stubborn mule Mouri Ran throwing in the towel. What a ridiculous notion.

"You're so strong Shinichi…"

Her words echoed like rich chimes in his head. It stirred comfortable warmth within him that cut through the gnawing pain that ate at him. He froze and retracted his head from her tight grasp to take her in- her sympathetic tears, reliable eyes, and her unwavering conviction.

"How can you say that?" He was so confused, so genuinely stumped by this girl—his most troublesome case. "I-I'm a _child _again."

"No." She said with a knowing and gentle smile. She held out her hand in the small space between them palm face up. "Not yet."

He stared at her and then her offered hand with persisting confusion. She was a mystery. A mystery he was pretty sure he'd never solve. Why would she ever love him? That was the crux if the problem.

He placed his hand in hers. She immediately wove her fingers through his, tightly binding them together with an unbreakable hold. Steam continued to flow off his skin. His temperature proceeded to blister. He could feel his insides twist, his heart give a jolting clench. The final stretch. He squeezed her soft fingers. She squeezed back. The small nod of acknowledgement from her seemed to wash him in strength. He braced himself as his transformation reached its climax.

His world was in an eerie slow motion as he stared at her unwavering gaze, the devouring sensation racing along his limbs. She fingered through his hair as he grew smaller. She watched in awe as Shinichi's clock reversed before her very eyes. Arrogant 15. Mischievous 14. Apathetic 13. Unsure 12… The sleeves of his shirt began to eat his hands which clenched onto hers with desperation like a slipping lifeline in a deadly fall. His face grew rounder, his skin softer. Alongside the awe and shock were the flickering memories of the boy she had known all her life. He had changed so much and it had never been more evident as when she watched all the experience of life lessons, jesting abuse, embarrassing falls, laughs of accomplishment, and cries of anguish shimmer away. She clenched tighter as his he approached his reverse growth spurt which overtook him with haste. He gritted his teeth against the steam and heat and boiling insides. His younger eyes flared open in a furious determination. He screamed again but it was different not of anguish or helplessness—it was a battle cry.

She knew without a doubt that he was the strongest man that would ever grace her presence.

Overwhelmed with agreement she launched his shrinking form into her crushing embrace.

"I'm here for you!" She said without thought. She clung to his form tighter that grew smaller and smaller still. His clothes sagged in her arms like putty. She was holding him. "I'm here for you _Shinichi!"_

She was crying. It was all she could do. Encourage him. Cheer him on. Believe in him. She felt his small hand cling to her blouse as the steam began to thin. His small but _strong_ hand. He was a poetic tragedy. She sobbed out of sympathy and anguish and she sobbed for him- for his stupid manly pride that he desperately clung to. The great teenage genius was an insufferable idiot.

"You _baka_…" She whispered through her tears to the bundle of clothes in her hands.

It was over. It was like a settling wave of dust over the stirring survivors or the clarity of the breaking dawn after a torturous night. She heaved a shuddering breath, but couldn't help the tingling allure of her lips which beckoned a smile straight from her deepest and brightest center of relief and bliss.

It was over.

Conan poked his head up out of her arms. Through ambivalent tears she saw his tired, _Shinichi_ look that had resurfaced through the years long past in his youthful face. Pudgy cheeks gleaming with sweat and tousled wet bangs across his large blue eyes. His youth was so eerie in the sharp ever present wisdom he radiated, yet she had never seen him so grown up. He gazed at her with the eyes of a tired warrior, a soldier and hero that was finally bestowed his honors. He looked at her like she was his everything, gratitude and relief quivering around his shaking jaw. She couldn't explain the emotions that coursed through her but they spoke louder than skyscrapers and cut deeper than swords. Her little Conan lifted his head with an enlightened understanding that shook her. Suddenly she felt so small holding him.

_Amazing._ She was in awe of his strength. To lie and pretend, to fight and hide, to go through all _that_. There was no feat greater. How could he persevere? She felt her hands pickle with the burns from his acid touch. What kept him going? She felt the faint throb of his strike on her cheek. Why would he bother? His childish face tilted with jaw-dropping innocence at her speechlessness. He was the greatest contradiction.

He cocked a lazy grin in victory. "Ran." His high voice chirped with a syrupy sincerity, like a prelude to a hokey hand-made poem. It oozed with a gratitude that was too much for the young girl to handle.

"_I love you, Kudo Shinichi."_ She breathed at her soul's greatest demand.

His face fell in shock as his world rewrote the definition of perfection, beauty, and pure bliss. It was a rushing wave of euphoria that empowered him. He assembled himself a new man before her eyes assured with a resolute sincerity. The image of her encouraging words reverberated through him still. It was his saving beacon of light in that scalding hell; '_I'm here for you_.' She had said.

'_I'm here for you.'_

His center of gravity seemed to shift. He shook in the intense and overwhelming empowerment that filled his veins, for he spoke no truer words than those in that moment.

"_Ran." _He boyish soprano lilted. "_I can't live without you."_

Yes, there was no greater truth than that.

**THE END**

_The one thing I really love about fanfiction is that shameless ability to write raw and unadulterated emotion. It's so corny that it's therapy. _

_In music we talk about repeated phrases a lot. We talk about how each word has meaning and purpose and how important it is we convey the composer/lyricist's intent because it's just so _real._ I like to treat words like music, thousands upon thousands of adjectives that can barely convey the reality of emotions and events. My frantic word choice is like a testament to the unattainable nature of life and love._


End file.
